It was sitting at the table, dressed in duty, and speaking with the voice of the god.
If this is their truth, then I want no part of it.
Chapter 31
The House of Merit smelled like pipe smoke and wax-polished floorboards. Thessa adjusted the arrangement of fruits on the round table for the fifth time, unsure if the dizziness came from standing too fast, or not eating enough.
The others moved quietly through the meeting room, one lit the last of the chandeliers, its flame catching with a soft hiss. Another set polished bowls of tobacco on the low tables, arranging pipes beside them. Two more hauled in a barrel of dark liquor, wiping their hands on their aprons before vanishing through the side door.
No one spoke to Thessa. Not since hermarking.
It was two days ago. She wasn’t even sure that was the right word for it. But it felt like it. She hadn’t remembered the needle. She remembered the cold and smell of iron. A damp, stone floor beneath her knees. Dropping water. Hands holding her shoulders. And pain, distant but unrelenting.
When she woke up at home, the tattoo had healed.
Just between her shoulder blades—a narrow symbol shaped like a braided thread looping into an eye.
They said it meant proximity. Trust.
She dressed carefully the next morning and pressed the first pouch of coins into her mother’s hand, saying that it was from extra shifts. Her mother had looked at her for a long time. Then said nothing. Just took it. Because Sera was sick and the firewood was low.
The ground had split three streets over. Just a crack at first—then the market caved in. A few stalls. Two homes. Dozens of people. The dust had hung in the air for hours. Her family’shouse still stood, whole by some miracle. But the ache in her chest hadn’t eased since.
Now, preparing the room, a wariness curled beneath her ribs. She was too warm or too cold. Her sleep had turned fractured. Sera’s fevers had grown worse. Yesterday, Thessa woke to find soot symbols smeared on the doorframe again. She wiped them away—again.
So yes, she had been accepted by the House of Mera as a personal attendant. She had met several others like herself—always close to their masters, never quite belonging to themselves. They usually served one household exclusively, shadowing their assigned lord or lady. But on occasions like this, when a gathering was hosted by one of their patrons, they came together to prepare the rooms.
One of the other girls passed behind her and muttered, “They say the prince is coming tonight.”
Thessa didn’t answer. She kept her eyes low, adjusted the tray.
The girl sniffed. “Think he’ll pick one?”
“I doubt it,” someone else whispered near the wine cabinet. “He’s got the princess.”
“Doesn’t stop most of them.”
Another giggle. A cough.
Thessa turned to the table and laid out the napkins one by one, carefully folded, edge to edge.
Tonight was the gentlemen’s club. The kind of appointment that paid for a doctor. Or at least something warm to bring Sera’s fever down.
Lord Mera wasn’t cruel.
Cruelty required effort and sharp edges. He had none of that.
He just didn’t see her at all.
Not as a person, not exactly. More like a tool someone else had already polished. A ribbon-wrapped fixture in the corner ofhis schedule. He never raised his voice. But he also never saidplease.
She learned quickly that he preferred timing over conversation. That he disliked uneven platters, and the scent of boiled herbs. That he referred to people as if arranging them, not meeting them.
And sometimes he asked her to sit. Or to stand nearby while he worked. Not always in the parlor. Once in the greenhouse. Another time in a drawing room that hadn’t been opened in years.
Always tending flowers.
He would hum under his breath, and clip stems with a silver blade.
